100-Year-Old Woman Reflects on Her Late Husband

Ralphie Aversa

Trending NowApril 23, 2014

A photographer is helping a 100-year-old woman tell the world about her late husband on YouTube.

Brandon Stanton created "Humans of New York" in 2010. Referred to as HONY, the blog and subsequent Facebook and Twitter pages showcase photographs of everyday people in New York. In each post, the subject's story is told with a simple caption – sometimes just one line. The subjects themselves range from children to commuters to a couple in love.

"Sometimes I'll photograph a couple that looks very grumpy," he explained to ABC News. "But then you start to interview them, and you find out there's something really deep there. Or maybe it's a grump kind of love, which is also a great kind of love."

Stanton interviewed a woman named Shirley and first featured her in a 2013 post. She gave the photographer a profound quote from her husband, who had passed away.

"When my husband was dying, I said: 'Moe, how am I supposed to live without you?' she told Stanton. "He told me: 'Take the love you have for me and spread it around.'"

A little over a year later, Shirley is the subject of a minidocumentary by Stanton. "Shirley and Moe" is a three-and-a-half-minute piece in which the 100-year-old woman recounts memories of her husband, Moe. It is the first HONY video, and it was uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday.

"We didn't say we were going to get married; we just knew it," Shirley says in the video. "It was a meeting of the souls."

The husband and wife were married for three years, Shirley recalls, when Moe received "an invitation from the president" to serve as a military doctor overseas during World War II. The couple kept in touch through handwritten letters and drawings, some of which she still has.

Toward the end of the piece, Shirley is moved to tears as she adds to the quote from the original HONY post: "A love spread around. There, beauty is found."